No More Heaven: Bad Girl
by zigCARNIVOROUS
Summary: IN THIS HEART-STOPPING SECOND ISSUE OF NO MORE HEAVEN- TRAVIS IS CONFRONTED WITH HIS WORST NIGHTMARE! How can he dream of victory with no beam katana to assist? Beat on the brat with a baseball bat oh yeah!
1. Dream Girl

This is so stupid. Not a zombie. Come on.  
This is one thing he can't help but laugh at-  
or try to. It's implausible. Not her.  
This is Bad Girl. With a disturbing new look. This is a young woman three years dead pointing her tits and glinting eyes right at him. Try to laugh. Baby wants another go and this is a dream. This -heh heh- it's a -heh- ha ha ha- a hologram. A really good optical illusion built in three dimensions by laser beams intersecting where she's standing on her rotten feet.  
Laugh at her because Bad Girl is one girl you killed personally!  
Bad Girl says his name. Almost singing it with a mean set to her jaw. Her brackish pearl perfect teeth flash behind lilac-petal lips. This is so B-movie bad it's gotta be laughed at. Even if Bad Girl _were_ here right now it would be impossible for her to be in this condition. This condition.  
Look at it. So convincing- dead as hell, that's a *Zombie*. This zombie in this empty Hotel.  
Really? Let's be realistic.  
Travis knows he's awake, he sees it's really her dead-baby hectic face brown-apple shining over there. It's not a demon, it's technology.  
A good hologram can be awfully deceiving; fascinating devices. The up-to-the-minute ones display every detail to the tiniest distinction, even from kissing-distance. Except for the fact they're inherently intangible, holograms are as good as real-life nowadays. He read that in a magazine or something…  
so feel confident.  
She --a real Bad Girl zombie, not this light-shell reproduction here-- would have a lot more problems than a ghastly complexion. Unchecked rot in a temperate coastal environment would have Bad Girl little more then a stinky leather-clad skeleton, if she hadn't been erased by the United Assassins Association's cleaners upon her inglorious demise.  
Which she _was.  
_Anyone with a firing cortex knows the fragile vocal chords and the milky ocular orbs are the first to liquefy after death. Bad Girl's voice. Her eyes. _Muertos_.  
She just ruined her own illusion by saying _"Tra-vis Touchdownnnn,"_ so laugh.  
Someone went to a lot of work to impress him in this way.  
And he's impressed to death. It's so good he'll enjoy it.  
This is the best show ever. I mean classic. Gotta be an elaborate gift from Sylvia. A real-life Resident Evil. Cool. Scary chic…  
way more impressive than a Murder Mystery dinner or crashing a 'haunted' house for all you adrenaline junkies.  
It'd be great if Sylvia were here for me to protect but who's complaining?  
Night of the Living Fun?  
Sweet.  
Bad Girl?  
This lighting makes you look _awful_.  
Gone-Over Girl.  
Travis laughs and it might sound genuine echoing in the dim Grand Lobby. It's her campy-movie cue to join in with an uber-creepy cackle, but she's just staring. Of course. She's saving a shrieky giggle for a real high-intensity moment when it'll scare the shit out of him. This is so cool. Who should he thank?  
Bad Girl smiles with half her face and swings her dirty, petticoat-puffy babydoll skirt coyly. One sliding step in his direction and the shadows from two lone cut-glass sconces turn her maroon dress black and leave only her pupils shining. _Ooooh_, _nice touch_.  
Little rust-orange stuffed chairs and petite coffee tables arranged for flow of movement have this squat-audience presence. It's smells a little old-dingy under the faded cleaning product odor. Naturally, the winter blizzard has been walking and talking all day and night, and a tuneless whistler can barely be heard far away, at the top of the building.  
This is overkill with a twist. The dynamic's a little different this go-round but the set's spot-on.  
Travis figures Bad Girl must have followed him out of the dark bar when he ran out of coins for the juke, just now. In there with him when he didn't know, watching him when he thought he was alone, milling around the Granite Peak Lounge.  
His hosts leave him a stocked bar, but charge an lb dollar and a half for a three-minute song. So shrug. He's in there before the quarters are swallowed up with only the AutoJuke7000 and the shelf lights on because all the tinted spirits up there looks nice and antique-y with all the amber wood. Little air bubbles ascended in the juke's neon tubes way on the far side of the dance floor, tables and booths. The whole place unchanged in a hundred years but for the labels on the bottles and that circus-colored stereo.  
So sample the best agave. Pretty good.  
But he wasn't interested in drinking, and if he were he wouldn't do it in the cavernous Granite Peak Lounge. So he was strutting to his room, bored, thinkin maybe- warm bath and a smoke? billiards? sexy movie, bit of manga? video game?  
sexy video game?  
_Shhhhhh-hckk  
_A paper-soft sound just behind him made Travis spin so fast he clocked his elbow on the corner of a square column he was passing. If he had taken the tequila bottle with him it would have shattered like a bomb when he whirled like a panicky tella-novella queen. His glasses almost achieved lift-off.  
Spaz much? Jesus, man.  
Travis Touchdown giggled to himself. Who else was there to giggle to? There wasn't nobody, that's who.  
So- he was striding to the wide carpeted staircase again, looking to the soft gold light on the landing up there when Bad Girl swayed from behind a column. Her bare worm-white shoulders hooked forward and her head hanging low with her bad eyes on him and she doesn't breathe or blink but sways a little because her equilibrium is all off- he doesn't know she is here with him until she taps her baseball bat on the tile floor twice, at home plate.  
No manic spin this time. That just _hurt! _Loud like a shot, the sound made his heart double over for a split-second, a giant gasp super-cooling his teeth.  
Try to turn. Guess who it might be  
don't die with an idiot scream on your mug  
Travis does an about-face. Not ready, but ready for the firing squad. _His_ _own _assassins.  
That's when she waved with her little fingerless bat-gloved fish-belly hand. The digits jerking spasmodically like talons as he saw her and peeled his lips back like a dog. Her other hand had the bat, chipped and splintered sharp on one side of the fat round end. The white friction tape on the handle of it blackened in the death grip of her dainty little lady fingers. The tendons making the hand grip the ash handle so tightly were greasy yellow and showing in high relief all the way up her fetid arm. His baseball babe.  
_No.  
_Try to breathe. Can't be sure- not quite-- she's blonde, and the silhouette sure gave him a start. The bat especially. Chilling to the bone, man, she was scary when she was _alive_…the batting gear and Lolita-naughty frock… just for a heartbeat, he thought _--!!!  
__But it couldn't be_ _her.  
_Couldn't be.  
And dares to say it.  
That dark head nods, just two little dips of the dirty-blonde curls.  
Travis Touchdown circles slowly to the right, further from the stairs but enough so if she follows, the light from the front desk sconces must fall on her face.  
Quick, her black ballet-flats skim the rug in a rubbery shamble, strafing him. Her head bobs all around but her eyes never leave his.  
_Woah!  
_Her first shuddering move scared him badly.  
_Creepy_, dude, she looks all dead.  
But it's just the dark.  
"Bad Girl?" Muscle memory tenses his right hand around the handle of an absent weapon. The katana's up in his suite. On the fourth floor. At the end of a five and half minute hallway, last door, and locked. It should be at his hip but he left it behind for no good reason.  
Pretty stupid.  
Now, the light is all over her face and he knows for sure- it _is_ the former-second-deadliest, most-insane-adversary-ever: B to the G fucking Bad Girl.  
When he recognizes her features, relaxed as they were when she expired three years ago, Travis is wondering who expects him to buy this.  
thinking no _way _this is so stupid  
Not a zombie-  
_come on  
_at the moment his vacation truly started.

He steps backward. She doesn't move and he does it again. Step. Sliding the other leg under him like lazy moonwalker. Follow me. Another exaggerated back-step, raising his eyebrows at her in a little whaddya-think-about-that-eh?  
Bad Girl's platinum eyes locked pinhole-bright on his face.  
She's slumped, shuddering in place a little bit, as if with mild Parkinson's disease.  
One step back feels like putting extra tension on an elastic band stretched to snapping point.  
Follow me, Bad Girl.  
Can't you?  
No. The beams will be interrupted and she'll disappear, so the program only lets her walk so far. Tech's got it's limits- he should go somewhere else and see what other cool places she'll pop up--_uugh_ -sniffing some rank ribbon of air wafted just right by a draft, Travis makes a face. Garbage stink, _offensive. _Standing around in the Grand Lobby, hanging out. Travis is all eyes and frills and chills just coolly regards with putrescence presence, chillin.  
Try to look for the equipment, something that might look like a projector or a gun barrel. Where are the machines, the lenses…  
He's taken his eyes off her, just a sideways glance at the peripheral and _way way _way too fast she closes the distance between them. Travis yelps. He falls back, bandy-legged, trying to run and leap simultaneously.  
Sorry, Travis, this spaz attack will cost you your life.  
Bad Girl swings low, racking his shin and nearly sweeping both legs, catching his shirt and some flesh with an icy-hard grip before he topples and can roll away.  
Like needles bursting his bubble, her fingernails digging at his sternum are a good indication this is no game.  
Face to face it smells bitter like almond extract and rotten ramen. The diminutive fist shredding his flesh is arctic cool, but it's just holding. Bad Girl is looking into him. Leaning closer and closer, it's heavy input; too much to deny- the intelligence burning from that face like sin, supremely lax like a mortifying nineteenth-century death-portrait woken -Travis pushes her shoulders, twists at her wrist until it must release, but she's much stronger than him-- she's _glued_ to him and he's forced to meet her gaze.  
Can she still enjoy being in complete control? Sadism post-mortem?  
Her eyes are so wide-terrible and she's just inches from his face.  
The fuck the fuck, the fuck is going on here?  
"_The monkey thou-ought it was ah-all in fun…" singing with a long dead voice that was crazy and child-like to begin with, singing in his face with that tannery fog oozing out and coating his throat, sing-songing god no and he's barely on his tiptoes thin stream of blood from his chest soaking into his waistband warming pubic hair teeth flashing from haunted lighthouse awful eyes dead-baby confirming you can't handle this  
_"POP!! Goes the weasel!" _time for the screamydoll giggle. Doesn't disappoint. Travis has no thoughts, just blurred ravens swooping all around. Maybe she can feel his heart under her knuckles. Trying to punch out at hummingbird's pace. There's a bone clatter of the bat bouncing by her ruddy-purple ankles and rolling by their feet.  
_Are you fainting, you pussy? Hyper-ventilate and pass out now.  
_He will, he's gonna pass out.  
_Please pass out.  
"_I can't lose this time, asshole. No way." Smugly bobbing her head like a spoiled girl with a secret. "For you." There's something at the bottom depth of her breathy words, an extra factor lending thunder to her snarky tone. "To win. Just so you know."  
__On the air, invisible intelligence reads his response and debates the next action it in a millisecond. Whatever to prompt the scream dot exe runs.  
__Travis just shudders like an electrocuted man when she cups the nape of his neck with her clammy fingers.  
__The fingernails with their black crescent moons at the base just scratching lightly… the other hand tensing and flexing, greasy with hot blood. She'll bite him now.  
__Panic, like water, can't be compressed.  
__He puts his hand on her face to push her back and wishes he hadn't.  
_rotten pumpkin oh god don't touch her  
_Trying to wrench out of her marble grip with no purchase, helpless to block her rancid tarantula hand scrabbling at his stomach, he  
_can't get away oh God oh Fuck can't stop her from doing anything i _can't ! _oh shit lord please fuck help your son now _!!!  
__She says _tickle party!  
_and claws his belly- here.  
__Stabbing five fingers deep into muscle with glee- there.  
__Even kicking and kneeing her, chopping her skinny wrist with all his strength, he can't block her from tickling him. No one could know but Travis Touchdown- and he's got no time to reflect- but he's never been so terrified in his whole miserable life.  
__She's loving it  
__pinching and digging for his guts  
__laughing banshee-loud this is  
__Foreplay in Hell  
_"Faaaaaahhck! Nono_noNOOOO--AAAAAAAHH!"  
__Loud and long, climbing in pitch and octaves, Travis's scream shreds the air as he writhes like a stuck pig. Both hands on her horrible smiling face can't turn it a little. Not a little.  
__Her petite late-pretty face is wormy-vegetable-sick touching it, _stop touching it--  
_she nips at his thumb with a wink- "Arn!"  
__Fuck!!  
__She tosses him, just a sad sack, easy to hurl twenty feet through the air with an over-hand pitch.  
__Surely to someone it's a comical slide, skidding on his neck with his jaw bouncing and his ass and feet in the air over his head.  
__Thudding hard and sprawling on the riser at the base of the stairs, Travis is To Be Continued._

_***_

_***continue to Chapter 2: Mask of a Red Death_


	2. Mask of a Red Death

Scene change. Pan white linen-shrouded tables to find the loveliest woman in the room, seated, body-language indicating boredom. Her soft cloud of blonde hair cascading all over the shoulders of a snugly-fitted suit jacket, Sylvia Christel, folding her napkin after the meal when her cel rings. She must end the business dinner to take this call, it's important, sorry. No problem her date says, disappointed to hear her say just business like that, like he hadn't been trying to get close to her.  
If he could only know how little he could compare to the man she's thinking of. _Been _thinking of all day. She looks a lot less bored seeing the number displayed on the phone. Not Travis's number, too bad. But this call will be regarding him- it's from the man Sylvia pays to tail Travis.  
Doors are opened wide for her as she leaves the building and sits in her chauffeured-car, answering the little ring, _"Oui?"  
_The city slides by the polarized windows. The tinny voice of her well-paid personal assistant slash private investigator conveys a lot of information quickly. It makes Sylvia frown right away, because he's telling her she'll have to wait.  
She never has to wait.  
She threatens, "If you have some problem doing your job--"  
He cuts in breathlessly, "It's not that, Miss Christel. I been all over town -can't find him. Guy doesn't respond to fax because he's not home, apartment's dark, he's not in the bars, not at the gym, cycle's parked at the Santa Destroy Motel parking lot like he hasn't gone anywhere, miss, but he and the cat are gone. Looks like he'll be back, I mean he left his swords-"  
"How do you know the cat is gone?"  
"Uh, she is."  
"Maybe she's hiding from you."  
"No, Miss Christel, the cat likes me…she'll come right to the window when he's gone and meow at me. 'S a good kitty. -Even her little food bowl, too, yeah they're definitely gone."  
Oh, _damn it! _She'll kill him. He's shacked up at some woman's place. Or skipped town like a coward. You're more foolish than you look if you think you can fool around on _me_, Travis Touchdown.  
"Well, who's he been talking to?"  
"Here's the interesting part, the last number he dialed was the UAA three days ago-"  
Sylvia makes a confused face.  
"-except I _thought_ it was UAA's-- then I realized one of the numbers was different, a seven instead of a one, like that. It doesn't ring." Her guy waits a moment and says _"Right? _No that's weird-_"  
_The call- her spy-secretary tells her- was a very short one. But not short enough to be a misdial, a few minutes at least.  
Sylvia Christel mutters huh? in French. UAA doesn't have a second number.  
Would that big dummy fail to notice a little thing like that? Sylvia's shaking her head. If a mysterious third party intercepted Touchdown and sent him on a false death-match, why take the cat?  
One thing Travis has proven in the past is that he's not too perceptive to a con. So why is it she's the one feeling burned?  
Her P.A. P.I. is telling her he's been trying to cold call Travis, but since 9:30 or so the phone doesn't even ring. Unless Travis made a call before he shut his phone off, she'll have to wait til he turns it back on and talks to someone -til then they can't triangulate his area by cel-tower. She's not paying attention to it all, mostly just thinking about the plot she's starting to sniff out.  
"Did you find a fax, any letters-" She's says, her fine brows knitted together.  
"No, all shredded. I'll call in a few with updated teletype, okay? Try not to worry too much, Miss Christel."  
Not to worry? She shot-puts the phone at the black separating-glass between herself and the driver, and shouts at him to get to the airport, _now!_ The cel bounces on the floor of the limo and she snarls at it, "While you're waiting for your fucking teletype you can tape those shredded faxes together and _get _me some fuck_ing _recogni_zance! _If you can't find Travis Touchdown, no one will be able to find _you_." She hangs up with her stiletto heel. Wanting to crush the keypad, break it bad, but she has too much to do.  
Like finding out just where in hell Travis took his sweet pussy, and why.

_Where in hell Travis is: bolting down a lemon-bright Hotel corridor at top speed. Almost biffing it when he doesn't slow around a bend. Running, pumping those knees, rushing at blur frames per second.  
_just get there and get the sword --just get it, no prob  
Last bend he turns Travis sees way way down there on the wall the rectangle of white cast from his wide-open door. _no  
_"Jeane!" Travis hollers, flinging into the suite, huffing deep blasts and putting on the brakes in straight-legged bounds. "Jeane."  
"Baby."  
she ate you no oh no  
"Hey! Kitten_ monkey, _come here!!" Clap for her, pat your thighs. Come on, where--  
oh shit don't cry  
she's somewhere in a puddle of blood getting cold  
"Jeane-_genie!!"  
_Look at this. What's wrong with this scene…  
god the katana's gone  
_!!!!!  
_"Oh fuuuuck no."  
The charger-stand Dr. Naomi built when the cheap beam katana's manual charge-system failed is on the nightstand but his **Blood Berry **isn't on it.  
Shut the door. Lock it now.  
_wouldn't trust my wallet to this chain lock  
_To Travis, the white door frames the Hotel map in a claustrophobic way.  
No peephole. . .  
He doesn't like the thought of her standing outside his room. She could be inches from him and he wouldn't even know, just waiting _right there on the other side of this door.  
_leave it open  
so when Bad Girl's here she can just come right in  
"Jeane, tss-tss! come on, come on babe…._come'ere_ _honey" _sing for her- convince that cat things are okay. If she can hear you she'll come out if you can call sweetly enough.  
"_Mew!"_ And here she comes at a trot, crying at him. "I know I know yeah." Holding the soft fur to himself tight with one arm, kissing her velvet-warm skull and checking around the nightstand again he feels a tiny bit better hugging his cat; she's purring.  
Who comforts who, you know?  
Circling the bed to the other cherry wood cabinet, he sees it's on it's side and blasted to splinters on one corner. That's where he had left another item on a charger because he was coming right back, and the floor is sparkly with shattered microchips and green circuit-board shards, the black plastic guts of his cel phone.  
Travis opens his suitcase.  
think if you brought anything else  
Speed sorting, reaching for the bottom and side pockets, he knows he didn't bring shit. _Dios mio… _so unprepared.  
Some yellow smear on the underside of a folded shirt in here. Grease on the zipper pulls. Very faint reek…Bad Girl pawed through my suitcase  
_gross  
_He realizes he's got his back to the door and snaps to attention.  
Get out of this dead-end room, Travis- go get a weapon.  
_Move out.  
_He's still screwing around with his belongings that can't help him-- he _should _be breaking a leg of a chair for a club or cleaning this wound- don't want an infection or anything  
He rebuffs the thought- _get real--_ a silly idea he refuses… _infection, heh-  
_is there a pair of boxers missing?  
No no, that's a mistake…  
Travis even checks himself, nope not wearing em… The pair with the red and blue x like a flag?  
-didn't bring that pair.  
_uh huh_ they must be here  
_you know she took em  
_why would she--?  
_gotta crush on you  
__Ugh…_Travis swallows thick, hugging his kitty. "Man, I hope not." To his own ears his voice sounds watery, feels like his gut dropped trough a trapdoor. Bathroom break…  
He places Jeane in the claw-foot tub, and lifts the toilet seat. He's leaning on the tank and the wall so he can keep his eyes on the door… dark-bright flowers flicker there, ultraviolet spots crowding the room.  
"_hoo" …_just breathe man_-_ puke if it'll help, but try not to waste time in here when Bad Girl's out there  
_with your shorts  
__dirty girl  
_He puts his hand on his chest, presses hard where the blood has almost stopped flowing. It clears his vision so he stuffs a washcloth in his back-pocket, snatches up his baby cat and boogies.

***

It's so easy to fool Travis Touchdown.  
Right now, he's starting to understand that. He thought he could just kill to his heart's content and be _rewarded_ for it?  
Dense, dense, dense.  
Carrying his cat down a headache-bright hallway, peering around corners very carefully, walking fast in the practiced-killers way that makes absolutely no noise, and he's thinking You thought it would be a ball. What a dope. Didn't just walk, you fucking skipped into the meat-grinder. Some point tonight I'm gonna start laughing my ass off.  
Travis wants to flashback to the faxed-letter he received a few days ago about the trip. Hanging up some new shirts or something when the letter spat from the machine. Like all stark communication from the UAA, it's just black text on white paper, nondescript heading and faint stamp. Two small differences: no fee is mentioned and there's 'RSVP immediately' at the bottom. Like always he signed and read it simultaneously. The tight message said: the UAA wishes to inform you of a special, personalized vacation to celebrate your victorious return to the Ranks. That was about it, and when he called the number on the paper the bland voice that answered used some other enticing expletives like 5-star and all-amenities, scenic, romantic and inspiring. Did he have other business this weekend?  
At the time, Travis had already decided to go and tried to press for what they meant by a personalized vacation.  
"The Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Have you heard of it, Mr. Touchdown?"  
f course Travis has heard of it. People don't call him nerd for nothing.  
The hotel from The Shining. Released the year Travis was born, the iconic Kubrick film was always one of his favorites. And as a nerd he knows not to expect the hotel from the movie, that one's in England. They want to send him to the actual Overlook, and it's bloody history is purely _non_-fiction. Dignified mafiosos ruled the world from this isolated peak with Golden-age Hollywood nymphs on every arm, serial-killers and boot-leggers and winners all, a tommy gun under every table, all that jazz. The Association was positive it'd be right up his alley.  
Travis thought then, if the UAA wants to give me a vacation, why pick a stodgy old hotel? Gotta be cold up there…  
Maybe the UAA's planning a Grand Ball or something. A real heady soirée where he can watch women's backs instead of his own. Sylvia in an evening gown and long satin gloves.  
_Of _course_ he assumed Sylvia would be there to greet him, acting as master of ceremonies- at very least his escort. Shrouded in the wintry mountain-peaks, on high tips of granite in the sky he could see Sylvia and himself waltzing like one body in a ballroom. Sandwiched close-together by masked dancers. Everybody holding their breath til midnight.  
_Sylvia's fingerprints are all over this one. If she's gonna give it up, so it's _got_ to be fancy.  
_Finally_, she wants to have a great big fucking ball with me :D  
Ball all night, baby.  
Yeah, I'll wear a tux and a fruity mask if it means wearing _you_ afterward.  
Hubris, man. She's got me priding before a falling all-fucking-over again!  
Think about how you thought there would be people and butlers and girls and a party and there was nothing.  
It was church quiet inside the frosted glass. It was early afternoon but silvery-twilight already with all the fat snow and tungsten clouds. The car drove away. No desk clerk. No bellhop.  
Think how long it took you to realize there was no one _at all_. Lots of fresh food and liquor and stuff, but dim and empty. Walls of windows completely obscured by blue-white snowdrift dunes. Only one in every ten lightbulbs was lit. Jeane didn't leave his side at first, mewing loud like she did the whole trip. As he toured around she followed and raced ahead. It smelled like people and dust everywhere. The second and third floor corridors weren't lit at all. The kitchen: spotless steel expecting the health inspector. The only windows not obscured in the whole place are a few in the dining room, they showed blanketed firs and rocky peaks disappearing and then defining behind static-y veils of snow. So beautiful it looked false, a tv show. When they went up to the Presidential Suite, there's a fruit basket waiting. Jeane curled up on his suitcase so he went to the kitchen and made carne asada for their dinner. Caught a little lucha televiso. That first night.  
He showered, got dressed and went downstairs. He turned some lights on-- the front drive, lobby, bar and ballroom. It was sort of eerie, waiting around. Couldn't do it in the ballroom.  
He threw a couple darts and made virgin drinks. He expected someone to show up at any minute. He played a little pool, anticipating Sylvia to grab his ass as he leaned over for every long shot. Wind hooting high and low. Travis was back in the Presidential Suite at 11:52 the first night, all dressed up and nowhere to go. No one called.  
"_We're bored, huh Jeane?" "Mew."  
_The second day of vacation, today, he messed around in the aquifer-cool of the unlit third floor with his beam katana for a torch. With the neon-blue light he found all the beds in the rooms he checked turned down. Plush towels and mats in the echo-y cave bathrooms. Fresh flowers in vases in the gloom. He called the antique elevator up and decided to try it in pitch dark. The coffin-narrow box shuddered, bumping him against the walls a little in the clamor. Travis stopped the ride between the floors and bailed out, giggling. For a second there he thought he was gonna hit the ground floor in a hurry in that sketchy car.  
After dos margaritas he brought up his previously dialed numbers. At the top of the pizza joints was the UAA. He called them and demanded, Where's Sylvia?  
Buttholes weren't at liberty to say.  
Just a short time ago when he was fine and almost having a good time- only a few hours earlier, Travis remembers without fondness, he was grinning into the phone and telling the UAA to send some chicks. He said, "Sylvia told me there's nothing the UAA can't do, so fuckin get on it. It's cold up here, _man._" _Click.  
_  
There is another group that touts itself as incapable of nothing, but in the TVC's case, it's true.  
The Trust Veterans of Capitalism are fifteen of the most powerful heads of government and drug cartels in the world. They're a skewed mini-United Nations, an alternate-reality Freemason's Club. They can play god, can get anything done because they can print the money and can create or destroy any_one_. Like they can do to Travis, right now.  
To them, the United Assassins Association and the millions it generates annually is a small venture. But that doesn't mean it's unimportant. For most of these power-greedy men the fights are all they've got.  
Blood is all they can have.  
And Travis is an artist when it comes to blood. They like how he nets lots of money, love he's adaptable and efficient and untouchable and that they can keep betting on him against greater juggernauts and keep winning big. Travis's die-hard fans hold the majority on the Veterans' floor and in an unprecedented move, green-light him for 'testing' after hours of riotous filibustering.  
-So he can be considered for the big leagues, start making them _real_ money.  
Seven Trust Veterans of Capitalism trumpeted their outrage in their gilded courtroom, but they were the minority and would have to sit through Travis's trails, reckless as that may sound.  
This near-middle-aged skinny punk with barely any muscle and they're wasting _how much?  
_Okay, to make it interesting, a few on the Pro-Travis team even have an adversary in mind. One to really shake him up.  
One thing all fifteen can agree on, Travis is far too cocky. They all want to cut him down to size, where some bet he'll grow, some bet he'll wither.  
The anti-Travis team of the TVC, the fogies who don't root for Touchdown to win it, just call them the Downers-- they say, fine, take away his weapons and he won't be so impressive anymore.  
Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Travis's gnarled groupies say, the sword doesn't make the warrior.  
_And that's all it's about. TVC one five just thought it would be fun to see what Travis does when he's face to face with a nightmare.  
__If you can rattle a good fighter to the point of error, he is not a good fighter.  
__So when Travis called them after a couple drinks with his snotty attitude, requesting female company, the Trust Veterans were happy to oblige. _

_Ironically, the call aids Travis in it's own way…  
_The UAA just picked up Touchdown's trail, pinning it to a cel-tower in Boulder, Colorado.  
"What in hell is he doing in Colorado?!"  
"Hoping _you_ could guess, Miss Christel. There's nothing in Boulder. Must be freezing." He's covered with tape and fax confetti on Travis's floor. It's not coming together. "Probably great skiing up there right now--" but she's hung up.

_***_

_***continue to Chapter 3: Lights, Chimera... ACTION!_


	3. Lights, Chimera… ACTION!

Bad Girl can't be seen in the Grand Lobby. Travis gets to the Rocky Peak Lounge and slips behind the horseshoe bar. 80% proof sounds good, he sloshes some on a rag. He has to set Jeane between his feet to clean the injury, and sees some of his blood on her fur. Under the shirt he squeezes the stinging alcohol out of the rag, sealing the folded washcloth against his heart. His shirt's sopping with whiskey-reek, tie-die staining a watery pink design with the blood. He caps the bottle and stuffs it in his waistband. He picks up his cat. With her crooked in one elbow he can hold another bottle of fuel and still have a free hand. A few matchbooks under the bar get pocketed and he's sidling out against the wall, listening down the expanse for a deadly enemy.  
He's thinking he'll go the kitchen and grab a knife or do something with the gas ranges, walking quiet with the front doors sliding past. He turns to them and they look sweet. Open us.  
Easy, he'll just leave.  
Find the sodium lights in marching rows out there in the white-out like it's a walk to the store. Simple. The bottom half of the etched-glass doors are covered, he'll have to dig that drift away enough to squeeze out. It won't be hard, just get a foot of clearance.  
Travis places Jeane on a foot stool. She watches him turn the knob and slam against the door with his shoulder, hard. A mule kick to the doorframe. "Ah, shit." He shoves it. Frozen.  
Damn that was too loud. He holds his breath, listening to the Hotel again, scanning for Bad Girl's face peeking out of dim corners. There's no stealthy footsteps. Just wind like a mournful, distant wail. He lifts Jeane. He's made himself want to bolt in any direction when he needs to think about his next move.  
Travis decides he needs that knife before he starts breaking any glass and leaving trails out windows.  
It could be hard to flick your bic out there- little back-up couldn't hurt.  
_Seems like trying to go for the kitchen is ill-advised, dude.  
_No, I need em. How else will I kill the brain without a knife?  
_beat it _chuck a loveseat through the door _nnnnnn Trav- let's_ go!  
Ignoring impatient fear, strutting like it's chill for the Ballroom, hand in pocket, toward the server's kitchen access, he's refracted in a dozen tall gold mirrors- slim guy with his cat and whiskey, no one creeping up behind. In all the mirrors he heads for a blue door at the end of the room and goes in.  
Bad Girl is waiting for him in the tight corridor and he must back out. She follows into the ballroom and he wings the whiskey bottle at her. Her head lolls on her neck and the bottle sails past her face. She shuffles in his direction, reaching, dragging the bat behind, shining-dime pupils fixed on Jeane. Bad Girl's grabbing and stumbling like the best Romero extra, all the hues of gruesome bruise gleaming in the rosy gold light. Across her chest, very faint, black spiderweb veins trace mini-mazes. Up close her hair isn't beautiful, it's faded and dry and breaking down the spiral curls. A cloudy film on her eyes can't hide their intelligence; Touchdown knows she won't let him backstep anymore.  
Travis yanks the bottle from his waist and spins it like a quick-draw alcoholic, holding it out to Bad Girl. They're moving to center of the shining-wood dance floor. "Why couldn't your spirit rest?" It's got a cork he can pull with his teeth and spit away. Making his voice low and solemn, he points the bottle, offering "Didn't you get a proper burial, honey? You piss off some voodoo man?" He draws a crucifix in the air with it, spills a little to her left and right.  
He starts muttering "Spiritu sanctu. Dominae muertos emporium," with his eyes closed tight in prayer, signing the cross with the fat bottle between them.  
"Santos phoneum exodus nexus--"_  
__(lit. translation..._ ' Saint Bullshit ends here'_... !?)  
_Meaning to pulverize his hand into pudding for closing his eyes in front of her, Bad Girl swings for the target without a sound and Travis pulls the bottle back and bombs her with it.  
_  
TVC-one-five shout with surprise in their fortified foxhole. Someone blurts "The hand of glory!"  
__A new convert to Travis and unto God-- a ninety-four year-old man who believed in neither before._

Bits of glass are still raining as she stops spinning from her missed strike and glares at him. Eighty proof is running down Bad Girl's legs and dripping from her fancy dress, she should be furious. He got her on the heart actually, an embedded, jagged corner of glass just by her cleavage displays the point of impact. Travis peels the alcohol and blood soaked rag from under his shirt and holds it to the lighter he's had palmed since she forced him away from the kitchen. He flicks the wheel (not engaging the red gas button) and the ghoul jumps for him.  
Jeane drops out of Travis's elbow and he moves inside Bad Girl's reach, using her own momentum to pull her down. Grabbing her dress and rolling on his back, he plants both feet in her stomach and launches her through the air.  
It's satisfying but he can't enjoy it- he flees with Jeane as Bad Girl slams to the floor. He's through the blue door and grabbed a cleaver and meat hook before she appears dashing low down the aisle, very fast. Travis steps onto a steel table to escape her whistling club and bounds to the next island with a sneaker-squeak. Bad Girl won't let him gain ground, she gives up the zombie stutter for cheetah speed and follows around the tables, every move, wafting whiskey fumes and bashing at his ankles. Travis attempts to bean her with a blender and she rocks it back, _oops! _the motor whickering by his hips too fast to dodge. Lucky miss.  
Jeane's pasted to his left side under the jacket with twenty claws in his skin, he doesn't feel it. He's juggling weapons, too much shit in his hands.  
It's a ringing riot with pots and pans and hanging knives he must elbow out of his face, Fuckin food prep steeple chase, she's chased him clear across the kitchen with no where to go but the Dining Room- exploding out the swinging doors with a hurricane on his heels. There's too many chairs tripping him up, linen wrapping his legs- _shit!  
_Travis crashes to his knees with chair legs stabbing at him and water glasses detonating all around, throwing out his right hand to stop himself falling on Jeane and the cleaver. He drops her and pivots one knee in broken glass trying to face Bad Girl, the meat hook high-up to block the swing that comes low to the gut and knocks him on his back.  
On the silverware-littered floor Travis can't breathe or cough for a few endless seconds. His stomach racked up in his throat, Bad Girl stands over him looking down.  
goddammit you bitch come on come on then  
He looks away as she jabs at his face with the jagged wood. Slight-of-hand-smooth, Travis' fingers drop the cleaver, freeing themselves for the thumb to shift his lighter into them to strike the flint wheel-- the little gas paddle.  
Flame climbs the Girl's leg so fast it's invisible until her dress bursts alight. It ascends in a fever all the way up her face and her hair and the bat as she rises up on her toes to do what she failed to do before she died.  
Her eyes burn.  
No time for Travis to think. There's no where to go but in, and he's doing a power crunch and scooting his ass forward instinctively, head tucked down and reaching for her. The bat connects like a wrecking ball to his spine as he hooks the butcher's tool neatly into her ribs and yanks her hips to the floor- a lucky move that only works because she's folded over in a strike. His back screaming with pain, he's barely got the strength to wrench the hook out.  
"_Ugh_- gimme the fuckin _headshot"_ and plants it deep in the top of Bad Girl's burning bouffant hair. Flames licking his face, Travis rolls off her. His legs won't co-operate to get him standing at first. Travis sees his meat cleaver and bends for it awkwardly. He looks back at her on the floor and she's not on fire. Smoke is rising from Bad Girl's head and clothes. There's little ashes fluttering on her chest and now they lie still.  
Huh.  
He was _about_ to hack her eyes out with the fat guillotine blade of the two-pound cleaver. Her eyes gaze at the ceiling and she doesn't move. Odor of burned hair and filth twists like cigarette smoke over the body. Maybe it's that whallop to his back but he can't step over to her.  
He's like, rooted, can still hear the echo of his own voice, shouting "headshot, edshot…"  
Travis wants to finish the job- _gotta_ make sure it's over.  
The meat hook did that. Just go.  
No way. I need to _know_ she won't get up again.  
Travis is telling himself okay, there's no reason to hesitate. Just gonna make a few decisive chops and it'll be nothin.  
So he's bringing it down on her face as hard as he can, with everything he's got, aiming for a spot under her wide doll-eyes, under the floor, and of course she grabs his wrist. Right where he knew she would; she's stopped him dead, crushing his forearm and twisting with crocodile strength the thin bones together, they're creaking; his hand red with excessive pressure.  
Bad Girl is pulling him down and he's pulling away. Travis can almost take his arm back, but her little fist is a clamp. He's helping lift her up, can't shake her. Their eyes locked, Bad Girl is bringing her face to his hand. She bites into his wrist like a ripe apple.  
It sucks. It fucking hurts a lot and it pisses him off- he knee her head against the floor.  
It's enough to jerk his hand out of the bear trap and she says, all sultry breath "Yeah, baby I knew you'd taste good. Don't be scared to get rough."  
It's a bad line and he jets. With his blood on her lips she's standing up, slow. She calls, petulant, "Aww, don't run off again! _Travis, _it was just getting _hot!"  
_"_Shut the fuck up!"_ he returns. He's galloped to the far end of the room and she isn't following.  
This time the landing that beckons him away from her is oozing dark. Last time he took the carpeted-risers four at a time it was warmly lit and he was heading for the comfort of his **Blood Berry** katana. Now there's no weapons, new injuries.  
Certainly no plan.  
The only advantage Travis has any mind to maintain is distance.  
In the second floor guest room corridor the light from the Dining Room dissipates like diving into ocean depths until there's no definition to anything as he sprints. Travis is running with his arm out to the side, counting the doorframes then nothing as the hall bends. It's a rough turn at this speed.  
Think. How many rooms down the long hall? How many doors can I sprint before the next turn…  
He's only up to seven when there's air against his fingers for a second then silk wallpaper. Stop, stop. Forgot all about this…  
Travis comes back. He reaches for the floor of the elevator car at shoulder-height and boosts himself up. His bitten wrist objects to the strain but holds.  
Travis sparks the whiskey-washcloth in the close, brassy box and is bathed in flame-glow. He has a second to glance at his wrist and it's gnarly. There's a bloody ring of teeth marks bruising purple-black and white from pressure. But she didn't claim any flesh, didn't really get those fat veins, and it wouldn't be that bad…Travis frowns.  
wouldn't be the end of the world except it's a  
_zombie bite_

What kind of intelligence it is Bad Girl possesses can't be said.  
She might seem curious as she stalks her prey. Or amused when they clash. Now she does nothing but follow with no expression.  
If she wants anything, it's to see him again.  
See him fuck up.  
It's what she's here for.  
And she can see well enough in the dim corridor- the doors, the sconces, the black exit signs. There's a harsh rattle ahead- she speeds around the corner. He's very close. A dancing diamond-pattern lights up the middle of the hall, thrown out of the elevator. She's there in a wink, ripping aside the sliding partition.  
From the shadow under the car, a slim hand gropes for her cleavage and grabs her dress there.  
Bad Girl is yanked into the drop face first. There's a disgusting thud when she hits the steel cables and pulleys down below.  
Then silence.  
Travis Touchdown calls out like a dare, really hoping she won't answer, "I don't want to hear any bad jokes about going down, either."  
There aren't any.  
He can barely cling to the oily rigging under the elevator so he hops off his miniscule toehold in the shaft back into the hallway, losing light already. He wipes black grime on his jeans. "Bitch." Shoulda stayed dead.  
He boosts into the car again, then up to third floor where the washcloth has burned down and melted the carpet. He walks away, allowing himself the luxury of catching his breath. There's a little time to think and he's preoccupied with how he let her bite him.  
Scratched-record-stuck on the implications of that error.  
It's really bringing him down. He can't even feel victorious at what he's done because he's feeling like someone just whispered the hour he'll die, and the time is close at hand.  
Inexplicably, a bit of bad-eighties butt rock "The Final Countdown" runs through his head and he cuts it short. An interior smart-mouthed deejay tags it with bass oomph: That was The Final Countdown by Some Bullshit Band You Hate, we got Queen of Pain up next. It's Suicide Night at the Overlook so keep it tuned to the one that knocks it out of park every time, kay-TRAV  
"Heh heh heh."

He's made to the light again. Before the barn-door sized picture window on the third-floor landing is a plush sitting area. Snow whispers against the glass, and the spinning gears and weights of the crystal-domed clock beside the princess phone tick softly. It's midnight.  
A good time to do something you would never, ever do during the day.  
Not even in the most dire of circumstances would Travis dream of doing what he's doing now:  
calling the cops.  
The receiver is hefty. He must wait a few seconds for the hole above the number nine to spin back home. Then two twitches of the one and a male voice answers on the second ring "What is your emergency, medical or fire?"  
"Ah, send the police. There's… Something very valuable of mine has been stolen," Travis hears typing and muted beeps, the repeated mumbling of "copy" indicative of busy dispatchers at work. "I need police up here at the Overlook Hotel, I'll be wait--"  
"Oh, I can't send them down _there_."  
"-waiting out front- ...what?"  
There's silence on the line then "copy."  
"What did you say? You better roll a panda car up here, dude-"  
"_No- _hell is out of our jurisdiction, sorry. You're completely off the radar, brother. Please hesitate to call back when you have a sur_real_ emergency, this line is for sin-free taxpayers in the realm of the living only, goodbye."  
"_What!_"  
The dial tone comes back, haltingly.  
That was unexpected.  
That was bullshit.  
He dials nine and one and one again and it's a woman this time "911 what is your emergency?"  
"Okay. Some... drunk woman fell in the elevator shaft up here at the Overlook Ho--  
"Can you hear me? Sir?"  
"-I think she's- yeah, I can-"  
"Sir, what is your emergency? Are you alright?" She sounds overly concerned. Worried.  
"Quit cutting me off and I'll tell you-" but she interrupts, speaking low to a co-worker, "This sounds bad, he's hysterical."  
_What_.  
Even though there's no noise, Travis plugs his ear and shouts loud and clear into the phone "The Ov-er-look HOTEL! Send the police!-- do ya copy?!"  
_The dispatcher and the co-worker she's called over to listen don't know what to say to the man who might be laughing or sobbing uncontrollably on the line. They can't make out any words. The readout hasn't popped, they're typing commands but it isn't showing location. They can't roll a unit."I can help you, please don't hang up… I need you to talk to me." The woman says. The distraught man sounds insane with grief, on the edge of hell. They're holding their breath to better-hear in the computer-bulky office. The women share a nervous look- he's screaming unintelligibly, making their hair stand on end.  
_"Stop crying, sir, tell me where you are and I can help--"  
"I'm cool, hon." He's looking at his reflection in the window, scratching his head.  
I'm not fucking crying.  
_The call cuts off. The dispatchers are crest-fallen, stabbing the keyboard for the call readout, but it strangely refuses to appear. Whoever just called 911 was extremely upset. He sounded far-gone to the old hands, about to kill himself, maybe. Worst part of the job... nothing they could do.  
_"What the fuck was that?" Travis blinks at the receiver like he's forgotten what it is. He sets it in it's cradle and puts his hands on his hips.  
The man in the window is stony-faced in thought, pro-conning an idea.  
A theory:  
he's already dead.  
His custom torment in purgatory to struggle desperately against an unkillable foe, forever fleeing in no direction in no direction like a beheaded rooster.  
It's a laughable theory but valid because he can't disprove it.  
In fact, Travis can see, there's good evidence that he _is_ in Hell. Zombies are fiction. He knows this.  
Horror-movie tripe.  
Bad Girl is as real as waking life; he couldn't convince himself she was a nightmare when he first saw her, much less when she actually _touched_ him with her awful lifeless slimy hands. She's far more powerful now than she was before he killed her, so why would she throw him away when she had him cold? _Why _let him run off when she has the advantage in close combat?  
Because Bad Girl's playing with him. Lapping up every flinch, savoring every note of his screams...  
Not to mention all the flirting. That's what disturbs him most. In Hell there would be no better hostess for him than Bad Girl. No woman had _ever _excited or terrified him so strongly. Before or since. So pretty and dangerous. Off limits even in his own fantasies because she plays way too rough.  
He can still recall every detail about their athletic death match, when they were grinning in each other's faces three years ago. He could tell she was the sadistic bitch he could ever meet. She had wanted to hurt him more than anything, just having a wonderful time, giggling. A thousand times she tried to snap his arms like kindling to stop his tiresome blocking. She aimed crumple his skull like a paper lantern, she was swinging for his cock for the homerun (or maybe just a grounder). Keen to shatter his skeleton limb by limb, Travis could barely keep her off. She was a real tiger but he can't forget his own awful mindset. Travis remembers the irresistible desire to slice her breasts off, amputate her lovely legs at the hips. Just _really_ give it to her.  
If there had been a way for Travis to make her deep throat his katana, he would have attempted it. Reflecting on good times, Travis wishes he could see himself in a more favorable light, less like a rabid animal, but he can't.  
Travis is startled by an enormous clamor like an anchor knocking around a haunted ship's hull. There's a rusty squeal punctuated by more loud reports of a tuneless gong.  
It's Bad Girl, goring her way out of the elevator shaft. Time to go.  
The crystal clock with it's visible guttiworks has good weight in his hand. It bursts through the picture window in a melon-sized hole. Whirling snow flies in and the temperature falls fast. Jagged pieces of the enormous windowpane fall and burst. Travis zips his jacket and jumps a little as Jeane rubs against his leg. She looks up at him.  
"Hi smartie… you know I'm leavin?"  
"Mew."  
He picks her up and squeezes her until she squeaks. She'll have to go first. Travis kisses her paw- "I love you fattie. I'm sorry!" and underhand tosses her into the night.  
His cat vanishes into the blizzard, falling fast.  
"Jeane!" Travis bites his knuckle-  
_that was the worst thing I've ever done_Bad Girl is already on the second floor landing below and behind him, climbing the stairs. Snow lands in her singed hair, on the broken side of her face. There's thick dust clinging to her, dust-bunnies in her ruffles, black oil caked in her hair. Her shoulder took the brunt of the impact, apparently- it's crunched beyond recognition, the hand on that side annihilated and barely attached. She has the bat in her other hand, it bumps the stairs with every step. "Hey, beefcake. Ready for bed?"  
Travis turns away from her and flips his body into the wind. He's hoping to land flat on his back in a pillowy drift of snow, not wishing to break every bone in his body on the frozen ground and glass three stories straight down, preying as he revolves blind in the drop with only his heart attack  
-but it's a textbook perfect back splash and he sinks deep into the chilly drift. Nothin to worry about. He dusts loose snow from his chest and shakes it from his hair, craning to view the window from under the walls of his Travis-shaped hole in the drift, searching for Bad Girl up in in the window. He's ready to dive away if she's coming down too, but she isn't there.  
There's snow down the crack of his ass and melting on his ears and freezing on his back and more of it blankets him as he digs/swims his way upward. The legs of his jeans are crusted with frost by the time he's dug out of the snow-dune. His hands are bright red and tender already with no gloves to protect them. He's looking around for where Jeane touched down as he treads thigh-deep snow. There's no sign of the little cat.  
Travis gives himself a moment to get his bearings, and he heads in a straight line for the road. Recalling when he was driven up it all that time ago, when he was surprised to see the Overlook was no where as isolated as he thought it would be, there's a Luchaco within walking distance for cryin out loud…  
As the faint light gets fainter further from the Hotel, the dim orange glow in the sky is like a beacon of civilization just beyond the black trees. The best he can manage is a high-kneed jog. Fighting hip-deep quicksand, the snow holds Travis back. There's acid in his muscles, too much burned adrenaline. He can slow down later. Right now he must get to the trees. Travis looks back but it's too dark to see if Bad Girl is following.

She is. She's really pushing hard. In the blizzard it can't be discerned if she's gaining on him. It's a white-out. Under a canopy of trees there's more visibility. At the trunks of the firs there's almost no snow on the ground, Travis- tracks zigzagging for the shallow stuff. Hunched over, Bad Girl is gunning it through the trees.  
Travis sees her, just a swift shadow in the gloom.  
His tracks are spread far apart where he was bounding fast, then they just stop. Bad Girl halts. The bat is pinned to her side with her crumpled arm, she's leaning over, casting her eyes around the last footprint-  
Right where he wants her, Travis _this_ close to his finishing move when Bad Girl straightens up and holds Jeane above her head. Travis gasps, "No!"  
Jeane twists in her hand and squeals in pain. Bad Girl yells out to him.  
Travis is answering, about to beg Bad Girl not to hurt her but clams up. Damn, he almost spoiled the spot…  
can't pull it off with Jeane in the mix- she'll be crushed  
But Travis is considering the trajectory- with the cat held away like that, _maybe-  
_Bad Girl is right where he wants her, at the spot he backtracked on his footprints to mislead his pursuer (worked like a charm in some movie) so he could get the drop.  
From high on a fir tree branch, Travis somersaults through the air from thirty feet up in a beautiful Swanton Bomb, body slams Bad Girl's head with his shoulder blade like a hammer on a nail. They're both smashed to ground, decimated.  
Travis moans. That fuckin hurt. That's why you don't high-fly with no one to catch you, idiot. Oh damn. He slaps the ground getting to his feet.  
_Miracle, _the cat's fine. Touchdown sees Jeane run from the action, up a tree.  
Bad Girl's wrecked, her neck jammed between her collarbones, legs splayed out from the knees down at unnatural angles. She's trying to prop her self up but one arm hangs limp in the snow Travis grabs it and rotates at the comprimised joint: the ruined shoulder.  
The sound. It's not the wood-pop of bone, but a metallic shriek. With his foot on her back, she's still slithering and glaring at him. He forces her arm up behind her head and rips it free. He picks up her bat and steps away.  
Her slender arm is heavy. _This arm-- _Travis looks at the torn skin. There's no blood. Viscous clear substance-  
smells of gear oil?  
A little break in the clouds has moonlight shine on the titanium shoulder joint and chrome-segmented tendons.  
Bad Girl rolls onto her back but can't quite sit up. It seems her silver eyes flicker, shifting lenses as she focuses on him.  
What's this- just a doll after all, huh? Travisdrops the limb. The holy light of a Sunday morning washes his mind. This just got easy.  
"I thought you were a fucking zombie. Heh- silly me, you're just a Terminator." _My mistake. _And he laughs.

_Directly after she died and Travis turned his back, the Association people took her away. Instead of erasing her remains there was an order the have her corpse transported. The rest is top secret. The UAA had no clue Bad Girl was to be radically preserved in sheets and re-grafted, stretched and stowed again, chemically bench-bled. Almost-absolute-zeroed. Taken out of the freezer and re-instated. 19KHz-intense voice-emulating-tech tricked-out, defiled, her body annihilated with extreme processes. Her skeleton cast and remolded. The woman was discarded in a bio-hazard containment dumpster but for the skin, and nothing else. Keep that shit in stasis.  
__This expensive barely-dead leather is chemically welded onto a perfect metal-muscle archetype skeleton.  
__Someone really should have spoken against this sacrilege. Satan's supplemented science.  
__This attractive young body being Frankensteined.  
__No problem?  
__Non.  
__They made her faster stronger and it took way more than six mil. In sheets.  
__Just another small business venture, some little hobby easy to forget about: the biologist- and chemist-heavy robotics program, the Price-Knotts Project. Being government-funded for more than 25 years now, run as tight as a ship in the gargantuan desert bunker built for presidents should they need shelter form a nuclear shitstorm. The amenities in that place: tall buildings within the mountain freestanding on hundreds of shock-absorbing springs that yield imperceptibly when the Earth shakes; football-field long freezers; mammoth water filtration silos deep enough to drown a fleet os semi-trucks; food and board for hundreds of tight-lipped government employees to defy God for months at a time without ever having to venture into daylight. Miles of temperature-controlled humidity-free storage space; all the secrets are here. Lots of layered-rock walls everywhere.  
But no dust; no rubble. This is a meticulous and clean operation.  
__There's no way Price-Knotts could be reasonably budgeted if they were only making one Immortal, but they're not. There's sixty-two sheets in different stages of preservation and elasticity, ten of those, like Bad Girl's, ready to be pulled. All the skins here are candidates for top-secret research because every frame they were peeled from was exactly documented from head to toe, down to the tiniest muscular dimple and fat-jiggle rate. Anything less than mathematically identical and you might as well throw a Halloween mask and fur coat on your shiny-perfect alloy-muscled mechanical dictator, because it won't fool anyone. All that pricey preservation, hand-eye coordination and automatic-reflex worth more than a jet fighter gone to waste.  
__And with just a few hundred spoken-words in the database from their 'model' -the person the thing used to be, right- they reform that persons' voice so they might say anything again. Every nasal tone and melodic hum painstakingly re-gifted with tinny, buzzy, treble-sharp perfection owed to computer speakers in a fist-sized echo studio implanted inside bellows in the chest cavity. The bellows only function to blow a little chemical-cocktail, if needed.  
__Minty fresh or dead girl?  
__Onion breath or new car?  
__Thank the research in the food industry for that technology, the Price-Knotts scientists don't have time for artificial flavor-testing.  
__Bad Girl, modded for short range-control and light combat, carefully injected in microscopic amounts to induce minor decay and injected again with neutralizer, she's back. The smell of rot is topically applied. The scientists breathe in slow-mo… these final touches the most volatile steps, the skin so fantastically tensile (forget bloody expensive) at this point any little mistake in elasticity and it'll split like a high-speed snake-shed with the first fast move of the endoskeleton. A flesh puddle with more money in it than several countries on the Earth.  
__But Bad Girl made no fuss, fitting together so nicely. When she stood on her own, eyes closed, just testing her balance in the lab for the first time and she swayed there, just a little, like a real person does on their calves all day, applause bubbled up from the scientists.  
__And cheers. Like it's fucking mission control or something and they actually did something to be proud of. It's a misplaced feeling of accomplishment at the feet of an abomination. All those smart rich men had a wonderful dinner in a luxurious home that night, nuclear clocks and designer cars ticking in the dark while they slept peacefully. Nice to know in these rough economic times, some people still do well for themselves._

It's a load off his mind to realize her soul isn't there.  
Travis puts a hand in his pocket.  
He _would_ feel sorry for her disgraced in this way, but he doesn't feel anything… Bad Girl is long gone. There's a few matchbooks by his fingers and he takes them out of his jeans. A skinny pack slips into the snow and Travis picks it up. It's not matches, it's his razor blades. Because he didn't want them floating around his suitcase where they might unwrap themselves, he traveled with the little pack in his jeans-pocket and here they are. Nice. His frozen fingers make clumsy work of the wrapper and fish the paper thin steel razor out. Travis goes over to the body sitting up on the ground and grabs a fistful of it's hair. He steps down on the scrabbling hand and presses the razor to her hairline.  
"Out of respect for the dead, I can't let you use this anymore-" and slices across her forehead, down one cheek and under the jaw. He grabs the flesh there and peels as the razor comes up the other cheek and he's got it.  
He's taken it back for her.  
Travis belts the body to the ground with the bat and strikes the skull. Again and again.  
Til there's a galaxy of motherboard brains blasted on the pure snow.  
Then Travis squats on his haunches to make a cave of his body. He lights a match in there and cups it to the oil-dirty fright-wig. That catches easily, and he holds the whole matchbook to it. With this little torch he lights different spots of her dress like kindling. When it's burning well enough he drops the face of an old flame on the pyre and walks away.

_***_

_***continue to Chapter 4: Two Engines_


	4. Two Engines

Epilogue. Suspect-looking 30's Deville rolling up the snow-packed road, slowing down as it approaches and stops in his path with it's headlights in his eyes. Looks like trouble.  
"_Travees!"  
_Lovely legs swing out of the backseat; it's definitely trouble.  
Travis Touchdown is kind of glad to see her while his anger is still fresh. Here she is in her devil car and skimpy clothes after the battle to congratulate him or some shit. _Whatever.  
_He snarls, "What a surprise to see _you."  
_"And you! What the hell are you doing on the road at this --oh!" She sees the white and grey fur in his arms, zipped inside his jacket against his bloody shirt. "Oh no…" She reaches for Jeane and he bats her hand away.  
"I was being sarcastic."  
Dismay on Sylvia's face, "Is that a dead cat?"  
"She's fine." _Like you care.  
_Sylvia Christel scans him down and back up. "What are you doing out here?"  
_Was I supposed to wait at the _Hotel_? Didn't work out that way.  
_Irritated sigh. "_Huhh-_ just say what ya gotta say so I can go." She leads him by the elbow to the open car door but he halts.  
"Ha! I'm not going with you!" He shakes her off.  
Travis walks past the car.  
Noticing he's more than a little perturbed, Sylvia throws up her hands. "Well where are you going?? …Travees!"  
She can't follow in these heels-- she signals the driver watching in the side mirror to u-turn and pull even with Travis.  
The old motor rumbles nicely at four miles an hour. A silent tactic, Sylvia's waiting for _him_ to speak up.  
Cruising down the wrong side of the road, waiting patiently.  
It's irritating him even more, like _he's_ the unreasonable one- just stop throwing your tantrum and get in the car.  
He stops and the car skids a little as it stops too.  
"By the way, I like the ride. How'd you get Satan to lend it to you?"  
She steps out again, flinging a lush silver-fox coat around herself and getting in his face. "What is your _problem?_ I'm trying to help you-!"  
"OH!" He interrupts loud.  
But she stays calm, speaking slowly. "It's obvious you don't know what the fuck you're doing out here…"  
"_Excuse_ me?"  
"So let me inform you. It's two a.m. and you're _miles_ from _anything _in a _blizzard and it's twelve fucking degrees!!! Don't give _me _any fucking attitude! _Get in the car, Travis."  
"It's not so bad if you keep moving." He steps around her and she digs her nails into his bicep, seeing she's going about it all wrong- she whispers, "Come on, we'll go get a room," tugs gently.  
"Get. _Your hand." _woah backfire _"Off _me right now."  
Sylvia sees he's furious. Travis's teeth are on edge watching her take her hand off his arm.  
"Thank you."  
Scorching baby-blues. Make it good.  
"Just let me tell you before you go. The Association had nothing to do with this, we've been trying to _find_ you."  
Disgusted, "Don't lie to me anymore."  
"Travis…" Sylvia takes off her fur coat and folds it around him.  
He insists, "The UAA had _everything_ to do with this."  
"With _what?_"  
"Bad Girl! UAA's got nothing to do with _Bad Girl?! _You're a liar!"  
_Now we're getting somewhere._ Sylvia spins into the Cadillac and turns back with a small card and fountain pen. She jots the United Assassins Association number in front of his face and he snaps, "Oh I won't be needing that- _I quit._"  
Sylvia stops to look at him. He's serious.  
Moving on, she indicates the numbers.  
Sylvia Christel states the obvious, "This is the UAA's number."  
On the card, she draws a small line from the top of a 1, it becomes a 7.  
"And _this _is the number _you_ called. Twice. Where did you get it?" He takes her little clue with raw fingers.  
She's watching his face but he has no expression.  
"Who brought you out here?"  
He doesn't speak.  
Who did he say?  
_Bad Girl.  
_"Who is she, Travis?"  
Distant, there's a motor hum. Travis tries not to let it break up his thoughts.  
He wants to stay mad at Sylvia. She's a first-class con artist-  
_how can I believe a word you say?  
_If she tapped his phone, wouldn't she _know_ who he talked to?  
After tonight I am _so_ ready for a civilian job, sick of this bullshit.  
Travis looks over his shoulder for the approaching vehicle, diesel-roaring. It's the snow-cat that's been rumbling around the roads since he passed the Luchaco gas station some time ago. When the lights of the store were off he got out of sight of the tank-treaded truck as it emerged from the forest, searchlights on the cab pointed down.  
Illuminating the trough Travis had forged in the snow, the snow cat followed it to the road. The trail was broken there because, blind luck, the roads were _just_ plowed. The behemoth drove past him crouched down the embankment.  
It was obvious who it was looking for, and here it is again.  
He won't hide this time.  
With that vehicle superseding his attention she's losing ground. She doesn't need an interruption now. Sylvia urges him into the heat of the car and he won't budge.  
"Stop it- I'm pretty sure _that's_ my ride."  
An impasse.  
The lights almost on them, "Who is it, Travis?"  
"I don't know."  
A beat. "_Okay_… so let _me_ see what they want. I'll pay them off. I--" _don't want to watch you die on this road.  
_"Please, Trav…"  
Travis sees some naked emotion on her face.  
"This is the last benefit of the doubt, babe."  
Before he sits he gives the coat back. Sylvia touches his cold cheek. "I'll take care of business, you know that."  
The snow-cat rumbles up with a short honk, the driver leaning out like a Good Samaritan asking if there's anything wrong tonight, ma'am.  
Without her frenchie-accent-- just a little engine trouble, it's all fixed. What's his rig out doin?  
"Heard there was some hitchhiker out here, just looking for him."  
In her normal voice, accusing loud, "Don't tell me you morons lost Travees!"  
Caught, "Oh _shit! _Miss Christel!"  
She rips open the cab door, "I'll have your fucking head for this. I want to know who's in charge and why I wasn't informed about this operation. Where! Is Travis Touchdown?!"  
The driver is practically punted from the cab, followed by two men. One speaks in swift Japanese to the other, who translates to her.  
"Mr. Takanara apologizes, Miss Christel… Financial reasons forced the Trust Veterans of Capitalism to verify Touchdown's stress-tolerance. Yes, and mental facilities. For insurance purposes, you understand. They felt you did not need to be informed as this has no bearing on the Ranked battles."  
She snaps at the Japanese man, "Well you were wrong."  
The man replies coldly in his stark native tongue, and his go-between rephrases in English: "With all respect, Travis's vested interests make your overhead look like a noodle stand. As a thank you for granting us audience to the fine show last month- yes, and to compensate future loss, you'll receive a substantial bonus." Someone who understands Japanese might catch something the translator leaves out here-  
_More than enough to make you forget.  
_The Japanese man reaches for something in the cab and hands it to her. Winking sly, might be cataracts or the memory of young love in his eyes. All Sylvia can make out from the old man she's talking to is "gomen na sai" --_ sorry.  
_His assistant says, "Hold on to this… but understand we can't trust you with Touchdown's reward. He showed us how clever he is and Takanara-san is very proud...Miss Christel, yes, he did manage to elude us. Takanara-san says he's very sorry for that… this is no victory." He climbs into the cab of the idling snow-cat before his words are fully translated to Sylvia. "It will be up to you to convince him to continue with the ranked battles. When you tell him he's twenty million lb dollars richer, he may not be interested in fighting anymore. You will be contacted when Travis is discovered. We'll detain him to a jet and have him home as fast as possible. Good night. " The translator steps up to Sylvia and speaks confidentially, "Mr. T can't say how upset he really is, but TVC's totally embarrassed, here. We're searching for him like mad- they really can't stand to lose him after he did so well. I hope he's close." The young man shivers like she doesn't know it's deathly cold out here. He glances at the object in her hand enviously. Then he gets in the cab and the driver follows him in. They rumble away.  
Jeane is cuddled up to the heater vent, back in the rented car. Sylvia sits beside Travis on the bench-seat and it's his **Blood Berry** katana she has in her hand. There's still snow on his shoulders. There's no objection as she bends his frozen-stiff jacket off his body.  
She wraps him in her delicate arms.  
He's still quiet when she nods to her driver and they all glide down the snow-packed highway.  
She's being very kind and rubbing warmth into one hand, then the other when she sees the nasty bite. "Oh! Your _arm!" _She sucks air over her teeth in sympathetic pain. "That's bad, oh, who bit you??"  
"Shhh, it's not as bad as it could be. Believe me." He's speaking low like he's got a sore throat.  
"Why are you smiling?"  
Long pause. "Do you know who George Romero is?" Travis asks. She doesn't follow.  
"…No? Did _he_ bite you?"  
"No, sweetie. It was Bad Girl…" He's barely got the energy to say that name, and sees it's finally ringing a bell for Sylvia. "I really don't want to talk about her right now. Some other time... It was fuckin nuts. "  
Has he just told her a dead girl bit him? That doesn't make sense…  
She hasn't heard anyone talk about Bad Girl in three years-- since she was assassinated. Slain by Travis himself.  
Sylvia had arranged it back then but had been out on business at the time of the deathmatch. Or was she fleeing a coup? Travis must have spared Bad Girl's life and Sylvia never heard about it because of major political upheaval undergoing the UAA at the time (all of it her own cause, but excused as it paved her way to the top of the industry). Dead or not- and it sounds like not- the woman Travis has mentioned is a prominent footnote in the Associations' annals. Sylvia's half desperate to ask him about Bad Girl- Jennifer, to her friends-- and half relieved he doesn't want to talk about her. _That _kettle of fish is too ripe for this long night.  
"Just tell me you killed her." Sylvia's jealous that slut had her mouth on him, how dare she leave marks!  
"Oh yeah, years ago. Who are they?"  
"Hmm?"  
"Who were those fuckin guys in the snow tank? Who set me up?"  
"Ze richest men in ze world."  
They share a look. She says, "You really impressed them, apparently. Did you hear?"  
Slightly loaded question. There was one detail during that conversation Sylvia hopes Travis did _not_ catch under the rumble of two large engines... The little part where she _does_ deserve heavy blame for this debacle. It seems to be all her fault for introducing those vultures to Travis Touchdown in the first place- at that little 'party' she threw in his honor.  
Whatever he managed to hear, Travis shakes his head 'no.'  
"They said you have twenty million dollars waiting for you... Regardless of whether you choose to remain a client of the United Assassins Association or not."  
He lets her knead his icy feet from bone-white to pink and massage friction-heat into his legs. Pressing her torso against his, tender, he's melting.  
She gives him sheep's eyes, blinking slow and pouting, "You'll stay won't you?"  
Sylvia's taken all the fight out of him. Her hot hands are hypnotizing him. "Of course, babe… I was just pissed. I'm not going anywhere…" He gives her his glasses and leans across the seat. He's supremely tired and falls asleep with his head on her lap in moments, curled up on the leather seat peacefully.  
_Aww, what a little angel.  
_"You're so cute," she whispers with a sweet kiss.

_the end _


End file.
